1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an interactive fantasy sports league game and, more particularly, to an interactive fantasy boxing league game in which the ability of players to set up and manage fantasy gyms made up of real professional boxers is graded according to the real performance of the professional boxers selected to be on the roster of their fantasy gyms during the season of boxing matches.
2. Description of the Related Art
Interactive fantasy sports leagues are widely known and have been developed for various sports including “fantasy baseball”, “fantasy football”, and “fantasy basketball” to name only a few. In many games of this type, participants will select or “draft” professional athletes to form each of the fantasy teams in a particular league. Throughout the duration of the league, the participants may also make trades with other fantasy teams, add players to their fantasy team that are not on any team's roster, drop players not performing adequately, and make other such decisions similar to the decisions real-life owners and general managers need to make regarding actual professional sports teams. A predetermined statistical criterion determines the points a fantasy team will be awarded for certain actual statistical achievements of its athletes in real games. In short, success and failure in a fantasy league is based on the actual statistical performance of the players selected to be on each fantasy team in real athletic contests.
Patents have been awarded for methods of running fantasy sports contests.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,918,603, issued to Hughes, et al, a method of playing fantasy football in which the scoring is based on the performance of actual football players is described. However, the method is completely limited to football, since it relies on the specific statistics unique to football, such as passing yardage, rushing yardage, number of touchdowns, and extra points. As a result, the method of Hughes, et al, cannot be used to play other types of fantasy sport games.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,371,855 issued to I. Gavriloff describes an interactive sports game in which a collection of users of a network participate in a remote fantasy sports league, where positive and negative scores are assigned based on the actual performance of real players assigned to individual fantasy teams in actual games. A specific method of scoring a fantasy boxing league contest is not an obvious application of the method and system described in the patent issued to Gavriloff. U.S. Pat. No. 6,371,855 only sets forth a general method for providing an interactive fantasy sports contest to a number of participants, but does not set forth any method for scoring a fantasy-boxing contest. In U.S. Published Patent Application 2005/0137728 of A. V. Guagliardo in which a fantasy wrestling game method is disclosed, the examiner determined that while merely extending the Gavriloff fantasy sports game concept to the sport of wrestling constituted an obvious application of the method of Gavriloff, the Guagliardo claims, which set forth scoring methods based on subject matter unique to wrestling and not disclosed in any prior art, were allowable.
None of the patents described above or otherwise have combined the concept of fantasy sports and the unique statistics, achievements, and events of professional boxing. Thus the need exists for a method, which incorporates the unique statistics, achievements, and events into a fantasy boxing game.